People processes and talent strategy at Godrej is driven by tough love: Sumit Mitra

Ability to lead self, others and business is key to identifying talent at Godrej. Sumit Mitra, executive VP, HR, explains.

The Tenets

People processes and talent strategy at Godrej is driven by the keywords 'tough love.' People management process is a two-way process. Employees have certain expectations and companies help them in achieving them, as well as their aspirations. The process is tough as it is meritocratic and the expectations from high performers are bound to go up.

Love symbolises the support the organisation will provide the coach and mentor, and the reward for high performers.

Potential & Performance

We identify talent around two dimensions: potential and performance. Potential is identified through Godrej capability factors - a set of behaviours put in place by the company that will make future leaders successful. The broad parameters are: leading self, others and the business. At the beginning, professionals get their performance score card and keep getting feedback on various capability factors on it throughout the year.

Based on the feedback and their performance, the people are identified as high performers, and about 20 per cent of our organisation constitutes such people.

When recruiting students from campuses, we make sure that we only go to campuses where we get the first slot. We may say no to a top-tier institute for a second-rung one, the criterion being that we would like to see the entire batch before recruiting. We focus on developing long-term experiences with the students during summer internships and reduce our presence during final recruitments.

Summer internships enable us to evaluate and review students and vice versa. Last year, 94 per cent to 95 per cent of the students came though pre-placement offers made through summer internships. To be able to differentiate and identify capable and innovative people, we do not ask students to send in the standard bio data.

They are encouraged to send their details in innovative formats like comic strips and videos, in a manner in which they are most comfortable in expressing themselves.

Programmes in Place

The grooming starts at the entry-level, wherein all recruited candidates go through a 10-month induction programme, which exposes them to all the group companies and different businesses. We also put them through a structured leadership programme where they work on rural and international projects. In collaboration with Columbia University and Harvard Business School, we run programmes on leading the self and others and leading businesses for our high-performers.

Hitendra Wadhwa, a professor from Columbia Business School with experience in strategy consulting, entrepreneurship and business education, conducts the programme on leading the self and others, and Bharat Anand, a professor in the strategy unit at Harvard Business School (HBS), conducts the programme on leading businesses.

Based on various modules, coaching and assignments, the programmes are spread over three to nine months and over 100 high-performers have participated till date.

We will also launch a Godrej fellow programme targeted at young high-performers next month. A batch of 10 to 12 people will be trained and coached on how to influence change under the programme.